Innovation Training: Making Innovation a Core Competency
Summary
Despite the widespread acknowledgment of the necessity of innovation in the success of a firm, the links between innovation and performance still remain equivocal. Although innovation is critical to the performance of a company, many firms are not capable of genuinely excelling at it. As Michaelis & Markham (2017), further, point out, innovation can be volatile and hard to duplicate, but may still be cultivated and the precise proficiencies supporting it to be enhanced.
The best-performing companies in the market support and instill various innovation-geared skills as a measure of improving product development activities, while implementing innovative tools and processes. However, what often misses in this is training for skills needed in innovation itself; the art of coming up with ideas and developing them into final products. The lack of innovation training in many companies can be explained through a variety of reasons: firstly, many managers may lack financial capacity or time to conduct training, having wrong assumptions about hired personnel. Moreover, many companies have a false perception regarding innovation. Others may need to see profitability on the training, which, if it doesn’t actualize on time, may demotivate managers from offering training.
In innovation, companies need to approach training by assessing it in relation to its current use in companies. Some of these areas include: formalizing front-end skill development and exploring the state of innovation training. The former entails focusing allocating more attention on front-end systems, which have been long ignored. As the authors reiterate, emphasizing on back-end systems has left many firms without competencies and ideas to create as well as apply novel ideas. It has also left many companies focusing entirely on refining the bottom-line of the company, as opposed to growing front line growth in firms.
On the other hand, the latter focuses on determining states of innovation training and exploring managers’ perceptions towards achievement. Basing on an interview conducted by Michaelis & Markham (2017), outcomes showed how innovation training was seldom carried out in both front and back-end but were significantly lesser for front-end innovation training. Moreover, fewer companies defined innovation training needs for international products and services, showing overall that innovation training seldom happened in many firms.
The author points out that many managers needed to indicate a return in training investment. There is a need to develop an innovation system through training, mostly by including senior management, as it is unlikely that any training management program will go far without support from senior management.
Abstract
Investing more time and resources in innovation training can enable firms to leverage on their strengths to create more successful products. However, while recognizing the importance of innovation training, many companies still lag in innovation and leveraging this to ensure successful product offerings. To explore the extent of the use of innovation training by firms, 30 interviews were conducted among senior managers from Fortune 1000 companies. Outcomes indicate that despite growing knowledge of the importance of innovation training firms, such training rarely happens. Statistically, 80% of the companies barely incorporate innovation training to address skills gaps in their firms.
Thesis Claim Statement
Investing more time and resources in innovation training can enable firms to leverage their strengths to generate more fruitful inventions.
Article References
Michaelis, T., & Markham, S. (2017). Innovation Training. Research-Technology Management, 60(2), 36-42. Doi: 10.1080/08956308.2017.1276387
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